The Institute for Creation Research has just published a fairly typical article for them: it’s the usual laundry list of amazing biological structures that cry out “Jaaayzuusss!” to the faithful. In this case, they pick on squid. You see, squid have wonderfully complex specializations to control pigment granules in their skins; these are so lovely and so intricate that — and this is the major leap of ignorance they demand of their readers — they couldn’t possibly have arisen by natural mechanisms, and must have been specially placed there by a loving god. As an extra special bonus, some squid have a symbiotic relationship with luminescent bacteria, so at long last the creationists notice a possible benign function for bacteria.
The reflectins seem to be unique to squid, coded for by at least six genes (specific DNA segments). In addition, researchers have found that the Hawaiian bobtail squid efficiently uses an exclusive bilobed ("two-lobed") light organ to its advantage. A species of bioluminescent bacteria called Vibrio fischera in the light organ receives nourishment from the squid. In return, the bacteria secrete a tracheal cytotoxin designed to control the development of the light organ. This cytotoxin is a small segment of the deleterious bacteria that causes whooping cough in humans. But perhaps the toxin served a more useful function, as we see in the squid, prior to the introduction of sin into God’s creation, which led to the Fall and the current curse under which creation groans (Romans 8:22).
To conclude, not only is biophotonic design evidence for a clearly seen creation (Romans 1:20), but the Hawaiian bobtail squid in particular provides the creation scientist with a possible original benign function for disease-causing bacteria. Truly, God’s creation declares–and reflects–His glory (Psalm 19:1).
Reflectins are proteins that stack in flat plates and efficiently reflect light, and it’s true that they are unique to cephalopods. However, there’s nothing magical about them — other animals have similar structures, they just tend to use crystallized purines. All it takes to make a reflector is a layered tissue that alternates sheets of high and low refractive index, and there are many routes to that kind of functionality.
I love how they had to spell out to their readers that “bilobed” means “two lobed”. They could have just written out “two lobed” in the first place, so all they’ve done there is show that they are pompously bad writers, and that they have a very low opinion of the reading abilities of their audience. It’s perfect.
Bacteria secrete all kinds of interesting stuff; in this case, Vibrio is pumping out a peptidoglycan, a pretty common class of molecules with diverse functions. It is not a sign of intent that similar molecules can regulate cell growth or cause symptoms of disease; rather, it tells us something about the flexibility of proteins and the variety of effects they can have in different contexts. The lesson of Darwin is that unguided natural processes have the ability to generate complex functionality, so it takes more than just showing complexity and function to demonstrate purpose. Creationists don’t understand that at all, so they keep whining “it’s complex!” as if they have brought up an irrefutable argument for design, when they’ve done no such thing.
And finally, isn’t it annoying and doesn’t it expose the ignorance of this creationist writer that he thinks finding bacteria that glow in squid at long last reveals a purpose for disease-causing bacteria? Bacteria thrive because they have abilities that help themselves, not because they’re servants to squid. That same creationist is carrying along a gut full of bacteria, and is covered with a layer of bacteria, and is living in a world aswim with bacteria, all dribbling out molecules that they find useful, and that sometimes do unpleasant things to human beings (and sometimes do useful things, but usually do things that have no direct effect on us) … and this confused, blinkered gomer finds one symbiotic function that biologists have known about for many years and thinks he has an answer? Please.
I wish I could think this article was an April Fool’s joke, too, but I know that creationists babble this kind of nonsense all the time.
Uh oh. It’s like they smacked your mama.
Hokey smokes, Bullwinkle! The IDiots picked a cephalopod as “scientific evidence” for G*d as “creator”? As if they think there’s no one around with genuine scientific credentials to pound their latest nonsense into so much dust, say someone like, oh, I don’t know, PZ Myers?
This is just laughable, PZ. Eat ’em up, big dog.
Poe’s Law in effect
Sheesh, the symbiotic relationship of cephalopod and bacteria is simply an evolutionary expedient, the kind of thing one would expect if non-teleological evolution occurred, hardly what one would expect of an omniscient god. Symbiosis is hardly the way to optimize design, simply a way to evolutionarily co-opt pathways that evolved in other lines and is unavailable to your own line (like our mitochondria).
But if you totally ignore the expected predictions of any honest “design hypothesis,” and you simply assume that fulfilled predictions of evolutionary theory mean nothing, then “gee whiz amazing complexity”=”gee whiz, God”, you have the essence of their theology.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
*gasp!*
ICR has thrown down the squid!
So… inksquirts at dawn?
I question the author’s motives.
Does God not require Faith? By searching for “proof” of God’s involvement is the author not trying to show “proof” of God’s existence? If there is proof of God’s existence do you not destroy Faith?
This guy, this Frank Sherwin, is directly attacking Faith with this article and by attacking Faith he is attacking GOD!!!
He’s not really a creationist at all but really a Darwin loving Atheist working on the inside!
“the current curse under which creation groans”
You call that bad writing? Sheesh. That’s genius.
ice
*pops some popcorn, sits back to watch*
“…bilobed (“two-lobed”)…”
Gosh. I would have never understood that fancy word without their helpful hint.
So, … what’s a lobe?
In one of his books Stephen Pinker relates how he once went to see a museum exhibit on spiders, which he had been recently studying. As he looked at the intricate webs he kept applying his background understanding of their development to each example, and then thought to himself that the spiderweb would make an excellent illustration of evolution for his students. Then he overheard a woman near him remark “How could anyone see this and not believe in God?!”
Why did God make spiderwebs? To impress us with His glory. To please us with the shapes. To help the spiders kill flies which annoy us. To warn us about spiders. Woven patterns of explanation …
Isn’t “Creation Research” an oxymoron?
It’s supposed to be 70 F in Morris, tomorrow.
I know a few squids, quite well, personally.
My bacteria are SPECIAL.
ID isn’t tard.
:) :) :) APRIL FOOL :) :) :)
No need to put on fancy airs, Geral– they’re just everyday morons!
“Isn’t “Creation Research” an oxymoron?”
I think so. But to them it’s kinda like bible-study for sciency people.
The latest Awake (from the Jehovah’s Witnesses) has an article like that, but it uses the “perfect” insect eye as it’s example of God’s Wonderful Design. I wonder why they never use the bee’s stinger or spider’s venomous bite to show that same Wonderful Design. Perhaps it’s because if you look at ALL of nature, it’s full of “perfectly designed” killing machines. Then, if you believe that evolution doesn’t occur, that means that God specifically created those natural implements of death. Of course, Christians try to wave away this contradiction by giving our current environment the vague label of “fallen” or “corrupted”, which doesn’t actually explain why those “perfect” predators exist, or how they came to be that way.
A real All-Benificent Creator would have given the squid little LED headlights and a tiny electric generator with a propellor, not some nassy of germs…..
Somewhere, Blake Stacey is licking his chops. So, do ya think after kicking PZ out, they intentionally went after the beloved cephalopod? Oh, as an ex-squid. I am high pissed of that they would dare sully the name squid with their creationist/IDiot bullshit!
or “beneficent,” and “nassy ol’ germs.”
Sheesh. I need a beer.
in all honesty, the pun in the title is spectacular.
That dude is such a bad believer. Faith’s supposed to be faith. God does not approve of questioning. I think he plagued a couple guys for that in the book.
And why is he presuming in there? He’s making shit up! Right in the faithful’s faces! “But perhaps the toxin served a more useful function…”? What’s that supposed to mean? Look at him! He’s presuming that something God made is leftovers of creation that aren’t useful! Everything is supposed to be part of HIS PLAN! God’s no sloppy worker! That’s sinful thinking there!
STONE HIM!
“They could have just written out “two lobed” in the first place …”. Of course not, that wouldn’t be good FRAMING.
Silly sinned34, any rapacious structure or behavior you can name had an easily assigned benevolent purpose prior to the curse under which creation groans!
I have it on good authority that the next ICS article will explore the original purpose of the bee’s stinger as a baton for conducting symphonies of crickets and cicadas in the pre-sin era. Similarly, there is ample evidence that spider venom was once used as a refreshing mouthwash in Eden.
I can almost hear the groans now….;-)
This drivel reminds me of articles published by the equally IDiotic Reasons to Believe Web site, where “scholars” summarize someone else’s work that has nothing to do with creationism and then declare that something this complicated must be the work of a god.
http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/index.shtml#design_in_the_universe
They never quote Jesus. Nice of them to provide handy links to what Paul of Tarsus really meant in his Epistle to the Romans, but aren’t Protestants, at least, supposed to figure that shit out for themselves? Note also that Romans 1:20 contradicts Job 11:7 (“Canst thou by searching find out God?”). No handy link to tell us what to think of Psalm 19:1 though. Uh-oh, looks like I’m going to have to interpret it myself…
“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.”
The “firmament”? Yes, whenever the windows in the solid hemisphere that covers the flat Earth open up to let the rains pour forth from the “waters of the sky” I just have to praise Yahweh.
BWAHAHAHAHA!
I take it personally too, I worked on these squid a bit as an undergraduate.
my favorite part: “But perhaps the toxin served a more useful function, as we see in the squid, prior to the introduction of sin into God’s creation, which led to the Fall and the current curse under which creation groans”
I dunno, I would read it “bilo-bed,” which makes no sense at all. So explaining that it means “two-lobed” helps in understanding, although they could have merged the two into “bi-lobed,” which would have been entirely clear, and would have saved almost a dozen precious keystrokes.
“To conclude, not only is biophotonic design evidence for a clearly seen creation (Romans 1:20), but the Hawaiian bobtail squid in particular provides the creation scientist with a possible original benign function for disease-causing bacteria. Truly, God’s creation declares–and reflects–His glory (Psalm 19:1).”
Boy, when they’re flipping back and forth between Nature and the bible, don’t they ever find the glaring differences in subject matter and writing style and vocabulary…kinda jarring? Do they ever get mental whiplash? Is that covered under their medical insurance?
That is really truly sad.
I love the idea of a reader who cannot figure out what “bilobed” means, but is presumed to not bat an eye when faced with such words as “bioluminescent,” “cytotoxin,” and “deleterious.” Not only are their scientific skills absent, their modes of clarifying their writing serve the exact opposite purpose for the average knuckle-dragging cretin reading this tripe. Krogg scratch head, figure big words prove God exist…
“This cytotoxin is a small segment of the deleterious bacteria that causes whooping cough in humans.”
Leaving aside the fact that they mean a small segment of the toxin, not the bacteria itself, this is funny. Of course we know that the cause of whooping cough is complicated, so it must be irreducibly complex, right? So how can a PORTION of it work for anything? That would be as silly as half a wing, or a quarter of an eye!
Whooping cough is not caused by Vibrio fischeri . It is caused by Bordetella pertussis , in a completely different group of proteobacteria. Why am I not surprised they don’t even get Microbiology 101 level information correct? I guess science is easier if you don’t have to worry about any facts.
That “curse under which creation groans” bit isn’t even original. It really does come from Romans 8:22:
Creationists are incapable of creating an original phrase; they operate wholly by descent with modification.
*scratches head*
I thought bilobed meant every other lobe?
That’s not funny. My aunt died that way.
Okay, so it was pseudo-croup and not whooping cough.I wonder how these creationist bastards are going to distort the truth when we’re able to discover/recover exo planetary life? Can you imagine the bullshit they’re going to have to come up with to explain the strange properties of martian, or europaean, or enceledean, etc. life? Sadly, their gullible followers will credulously buy into anything said to them.
You sir owe me a new keyboard and diet coke. :D
Forgive me for veering off-topic a bit.
PZ, do you know about the HTML rel=”nofollow” attribute? It’s a way to link without also increasing search engine traffic to the linked site. It’s not a rock-solid specification (see here), but it is honored by most.
It’s tedious, but perfect for citing the bad guys without also helping their Google page rank. The link in this article could have been written thusly:
<a href="http://www.icr.org/article/3769/" rel="nofollow">they pick on squid</a>
But Blake, there’s also never any ‘new information’, that much is obvious.
I remember having a conversation with a woman about some of the remarkable abilities squid have, after we’d each seen a NOVA on the topic. To be fair, they really are astonishing. But the thing that struck her was when I made a remark about squid having exactly as long to evolve as we have had. I suppose because of how evolution is often taught, she had not considered that a modern human and modern squid, with a common ancestor way back in time, had had precisely the same amount of time to evolve remarkable adaptations. This one simple fact enabled her to accept that squid’s abilities are evolved–previously she had apparently thought that squid evolution had essentially ceased when they first appears on earth. It seems silly, but I bet that’s a common misperception.
I wish these creotards would wake up and realize that they themselves are perhaps the greatest argument against intelligent design there is.
It’s like they just sort of waddle around like penguins who’ve suffered some sort of blunt force trauma to the head.
This cytotoxin is a small segment of the deleterious bacteria that causes whooping cough in humans. But perhaps the toxin served a more useful function, as we see in the squid, prior to the introduction of sin into God’s creation, which led to the Fall and the current curse under which creation groans (Romans 8:22).
Okay, that does it. Proteomics definitely needs to work on the integrity of their peer review process.
bilo-bed, is actually a misprint. it should be filo-bed, spelled thus: filobed.
check out http://www.chilipaper.com/FDoughman/filo.htm
to quote the site: “Filo dough is a beautiful, thin pastry, sold in many “sheets” or layers.”
Squid do not make use of reflectins, “proteins that stack in flat plates and efficiently reflect light.”
They make use of filo dough that is stacked in flat plates.
The thinness of the dough creates compound layers that are separated by 1/4 wavelength increments of the electromagnetic spectrum visible under water. The bacteria tell the squid which wavelengths to preferentially destructively interfere in the filobed structures. This allows the squid to disappear from other “perfectly designed” killing machines of the deep.
This of course *is* evidence of intelligent design. Squid have obviously been touched by a noodly pasta dough appendage!*
*this research supported by a grant from the “FSM: designing a better underwater killing machine institute.”
We could try to turn the table on them and create a new code and add their genus and species? Something new accepted by science to help categorize the creationist reasoning (sorry, have to be fair to something that can at least talk) The Phylae; gobbledygook, sub species, anthropoid, dead end, etc….
then each time they speak you refer to one of these category that they do not know about due to the inability to understand the concept “study” as something not all ready provided to them by indoctrination. “your premise is covered under subsection 1, group C, numbers 1 though 35, and we can’t diverge from our discussion at this time to deal with a matter all ready solved and agreed to by jeezus hisself.
just fry them with a little reason, or not, and they explode into meatbag shrapnel and can at least feed the ecostructure.
The mix of sciency sounding prose with theological references to the groaning of creation, etc. is really a noxious concoction; in fact, it leaves me feeling rather nauseated.
Speaking of which, I don’t know much about microbiology, but I would figure that Vibrio fischeri would probably be related to Vibrio cholerae, which doesn’t even affect the same part of the body as whooping cough. But as you say, checking facts are not really important to creationists.
Hey! Every day is April Fools’ Day!
The worst part is their citation of Bible verses. It’s almost as though they think that even the mere appearance of a scientific orientation is anathema to their audience, so they need to throw in a few lines from the “good book” to ensure that they don’t lose readership.
I’m reminded of Hitch’s remark to Sean Hannity: “You sound like someone who has never heard any of the arguments against your position”. “It’s complex!” was an argument up until 1859.
I’m reminded of Hitch’s remark to Sean Hannity: “You sound like someone who has never heard any of the arguments against your position”. “It’s complex!” was an argument up until 1859.
What I fail to understand is why creationists NEED for Genesis to be factually accurate and literally true.
Is their faith in God so weak that only believe if every last word, dot and tittle in the Bible is true?
How sad.
The selection of a squid is so obviously selected to pimp you, PZ, it’s not even funny. By the way where can I get a squid hat like the one you used in your music video?
I have been thinking maybe it is time for a new form of argument when we encounter this Christian position of look how complex and wonderful ‘X’ is created.
Instead of asking ‘where did that ‘designer’ come from’ focus on how that ‘designer’ assembled creation and how the knowledgebase used to assemble that creation came to be known by the ‘designer’. If the cell is arguably more complex than Darwin knew, then we are also at a new level of omniscience and omnipotence for a ‘designer’ too. It seems perfectly reasonable to reopen the argument around the case for a ‘designer’s skills and that ‘designer’s knowledge. Omniscient now is not the same as omniscient at the time of Darwin. The same for omnipotence. Want to be taken as a valid science? begin to fill in these blanks – of how possible and how known.
Also, I think a midpoint concession we should seek from design proponents is that life is made of the same substances as nonliving things. From the starting position that we living things are formed from the same substances as non-life, one begins to lay open the real possibility that we are, while special, just a more complicated arrangement of non-living materials. This begins to shake the confidence in those who argue ‘I just can’t see how life could have arisen from non-life’.
Some of course will forget the rules of their playbook and begin to argue for a non-material soul. And that my friends is just another way to show that designers are just creos in wolf’s clothing.
OK, as a microbiology grad student I will make a clear dispute of the whooping cough comment. Yes, Vibrio fischeri secretes a toxin, and the type of toxin is called an ADP-ribosyltransferase. This refers to the function of the toxin upon the host. This toxin has the same function, *but not the same amino acid sequence* as the ADP-ribosyltransferase pertussis toxin made by B. pertussis, the causative agent of whooping cough. In no way is the V. fischeri toxin “a small segment of the deleterious bacteria”. To make it even clearer, V. fischeri toxin (HvnC) is 292 amino acids long, while the toxin subunit from B. pertussis (PtxA) is 269.
PZ, when you refer to peptidoglycan being the substance in question, perhaps you are thinking of endotoxin, which is really just lipopolysaccharide from the outer leaflet of the outer membrane of gram negative bacteria? Though Pep-G is often leaked as well.
snip: “V. fischeri ADP-r has no significant homology (DNA or amino acid) with other known ADP-ribosyltransferases.”
reference: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=177641 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pertussis_toxin
Therefore, an entity (God) did NOT create this toxin and then it somehow got passed around by bacteria “after the fall” when they all got evil. Multiple pathogenic and symbiotic bacteria independently evolved toxins with similar function in order to control highly conserved host proteins and signaling pathways. There are many, many examples of other classes of bacterial toxins and effectors which have similar function but clearly do not share homology.
Blue ringed octopuses also have symbiotic Vibrio in their salivary glands that produce TTX for their venom. That hardly sounds benign. Perhaps God wants octopuses to be able to kill people, as well as for squids to glow in the dark?
On the non-stupid front, I wonder if it’s “convergent evolution of symbiosis” that an octopus and squid both found ways to provide a home for Vibrio… I’d guess so, since it’s a relatively common pathogen, octos and squids diverged quite a while ago, and I’m not aware of any other species of octo that do this… there are many squids with photophores, and this page:
http://www.tolweb.org/accessory/Cephalopod_Photophore_Terminology?acc_id=2015
says that many do use symbiotic bacteria.
Shawna = Awesome.
I made the mistake of going to the ICR site and reading some of the articles. OW, my head. But something in the squid article really put me off. There’s a superscript that sites a reference in the footnotes. But the sentence that cites the reference is not a declarative statement of fact that requires substantiation; it is a rhetorical question! And the reference cited? It’s the author’s own book! In this case, the purpose of the citation is to give the article the appearance of a scientific work which it is clearly NOT.
Clearly a deliberate shot across PZ’s beak.
Seconded. I’m going to go out on a limb here, and venture a guess that the author’s M.A. is *not* in microbiology.
‘Bilobed’: You all have it totally wrong!
It’s a reference to JRR Tolkien…
Thats right…”Bilobed Baggins”
#40
Please do not be so hard on penguins. Even penguins who have been subjected to head trauma are likely more connected to the constraints of physical reality than creationists are.
I think I’m beginning to understand where the whole “no new genetic information has ever been demonstrated to arise through mutation” creationist claim comes from: they’re only considering creationist research like that linked above.
Of course, I think they’re being unnecessarily specific–since they’re only considering creationist research, their claim could be shortened to “no new…information has ever been demonstrated” and it would remain just as true.
So. The ICR has taken up the mantle…
#57 PaulR wrote:
‘Bilobed’: You all have it totally wrong!
It’s a reference to JRR Tolkien…
Thats right…“Bilobed Baggins”
I was expecting that link with the Bilbo comment to be either rickrolling or this (warning, you don’t want to click this, but you can’t help it):
Even if every word of it is true, wouldn’t it be far stronger evidence for Cthulu than any abrahamic sky fairy?
I mean c’mon. It’s about squid.
LOL, Kseniya! You made me laugh so hard I almost inked myself.
#62 Mark,
Arrrgh! I need to watch this to push it out of my mind. Bilbo and sInging orcs, much better!
I see that they have not progressed since the Answers In Genesis article on cuttlefish that annoyed me a while ago (http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2007/11/cuttlefish-in-genesis.html). What bothers me now is that AiG is on page one of a google search for “cuttlefish”, whereas I am only on page 2.
Bastards.
Off Topic–ABC News (East Coast US, anyway) is a few minutes away from a story on squid mating. So…PZ is likely to be occupied for a while.
Hm. They don’t even know that the bee/wasp sting evolved from an ovipositor.
(Spider venom, though, is spider venom.)
LOL!!!
:-D
<wince>
I was taught by a molecular biologist that molecular biologists should at long last stop saying “homology” when they mean “identity”. “Homologous” means “derived from the same structure in the MRCA of the organisms in question”; it commonly happens that my A is homologous to your G (in position).
Hm. They don’t even know that the bee/wasp sting evolved from an ovipositor.
(Spider venom, though, is spider venom.)
LOL!!!
:-D
<wince>
I was taught by a molecular biologist that molecular biologists should at long last stop saying “homology” when they mean “identity”. “Homologous” means “derived from the same structure in the MRCA of the organisms in question”; it commonly happens that my A is homologous to your G (in position).
I get the English Wikipedia article as the first result. Neither you nor AiG are on the first page (and I don’t bother looking farther).
I get the English Wikipedia article as the first result. Neither you nor AiG are on the first page (and I don’t bother looking farther).
I’m just telling y’all, I refuse to click on any more links today, because if I see Rick one more time I’m going to throw the laptop across the room and I’m not taking any chances.
Although, if you liked Nimoy’s Bilbo, you’ll surely like this.
No, AIG is on the first page – first line is images, first text link is wikipedia, 2nd link is tonmo, 3rd one is AIG.
“The origins of the amazing features of the cuttlefish can be more easily explained if we accept it as just another miraculous example of the work of the Creator. ”
Hmmmm…..Paula Weston has a vastly different idea of the word “explain” than I do.
Lovely poem on the cuttlefish eye, Cuttlefish.
#70
But if the Dick Dawk rap was more your thing, check this out. (NSFW lyrics)
I especially like how everything that adversely affects humans today must have had a “beneign” purpose before Das Fall, in which all of nature turned against us.
As an extra special bonus, some squid have a symbiotic relationship with luminescent bacteria, so at long last the creationists notice a possible benign function for bacteria.
*yawn*
all they had to do was look at the work done on mesopelagic fishes decades ago.
lots of different genera utilize symbiotic bioluminescent bacteria in their light generating structures.
Zach, that is true. There wasn’t even any gravity before The Fall.
Nihilism, thy name is xianity…
How to reject value and still pretend you’re trying…
Nihilism, thy name is xianity…
True dat.
#53 + #56 *blushing* thanks! Hopefully my committee will feel the same way next week…
#67: I agree that the phrase is awkward – it’s a direct quote from the abstract. I believe here it refers to overall homology, i.e. a number of conserved positions or motifs showing a probable shared MRCA, rather than identity at each position in those sequences.
This cytotoxin is a small segment of the deleterious bacteria that causes whooping cough in humans. But perhaps the toxin served a more useful function, as we see in the squid
In other words, before the Fall the cytotoxin (which now causes whooping cough in humans) carried out the same function that it does in squid – the development of light organs. And we know how useful light organs are to humans.
And we know how useful light organs are to humans.
speak for yourself!
wait, I think I’ve said too much.
what a sac of shit.
so a creation paper is basically a bit of biol with a biblical quote at the end, seriously unimpressive.
I wonder what the foreskin was used for prior to the fall?? maybe to provide a nice safe house for a load of benign little bacterial friends.
‘the introduction of sin into God’s creation, which led to the Fall and the current curse under which creation groans (Romans 8:22)’.
lo and behold the fall cometh and suddenly we have cheesy penises.
Topics in Creation Research
Music criticism: from Creation’s groans to Baptists’ glossolalia.
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=4569697&affil=wmur
The squid mating video I mentioned above.
(ps. Thanks, CrypticLife!)
for every bacterium there are a thousand bacteriophages looking for a home.
To creationists, recognizing the tiniest fact about their relative place in the universe would amount to them sshutting themselves up in the Total Perspective Vortex, which is a thing most sentient beings avoid.
If I thought I could be in the same room with pee wwe and his brown-noser sychophant crowd I would personally underwrite a debate between say Jerry Bergman and the isolated mental dwarf of Minnesota.
After all the screeds I note not a single rational refutation to the articles content.
If I were this crowd I would be on the lookout for turdeating bacteria and the eminent danger they pose for evos.
Go get some rest, Keith.
Well Mr. Sherwin actually has degrees in biology (http://creationwiki.org/Frank_Sherwin and http://www.icr.org/research/index/research_biosci/) and he actually has a short publication in a legitimate journal (http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-3395%28198804%2974%3A2%3C336%3AHOSOTM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage).
I find it interesting, though, that his biology degrees consist of a B.A. and an M.A.
Let’s try those urls again.
http://creationwiki.org/Frank_Sherwin
http://www.icr.org/research/index/research_biosci/
http://tinyurl.com/22yx8z
must have been specially placed there by a loving god
If it was a loving god, I would have chromataphores and bioluminescence.
That, or it’s just a god who loves squid more than humans. Anyone suggested that to ’em yet?
“I sit here happy to be alive and sure that some reason must exist for ‘why me?’ Or the earth might have been totally covered with water, and an octopus might now be telling its children why the eight-legged God of all things had made such a perfect world for cephalopods. Sure we fit. We wouldn’t be here if we didn’t. But the world wasn’t made for us and it will endure without us.” ~ Stephen Jay Gould
Or the earth might have been totally covered with water
well, there’s an awful lot more occupiable water than land.
a LOT more.
and there a buttload more beetles on land than anything else with legs.
maybe we’re just here as food for beetle larvae?
Pratchett wrote about that in The Last Continent:
God: “Oh yes, you can’t beat a beetle when you’re feeling down. Sometimes I think it’s what it’s all about, you know.”
Ponder: “What all?”
God: “Everything. The whole thing. Trees, grass, flowers… What did you think it was all for?”
Ponder: “Well, I didn’t think it was for beetles. What about, well, what about the elephant, for a start?”
God: “Dung.”
Ponder: “What? That’s rather a lot of trouble to go to just for dung, isn’t it?”
God: “That’s ecology for you, I’m afraid.”
Well, fuck me–I was guessing he had an MA in hotel management or something like that.
Ah. Pensacola. Now I understand.
Re: #39:
Okay, I’ve always wondered about this. I get the idea that squid have had as long to evolve as we’ve had. They’ve had enough time to develop some really cool traits. But what about the more “primitive” forms, such as hagfish? The hagfish alive today have had exactly as long as we’ve had to evolve. So why are they still “primitive”?
This might seem like a variation on the complaint, “So why are there still monkeys?” But that’s an easy one. Today’s monkeys have (probably) evolved just as much as we have since our last common ancestor. There just hasn’t been enough time for the two groups to diverge very much. But hagfish? Shouldn’t they have evolved in some direction? Is it as simple as that they are perfectly evolved for their niche, and as long as their ecological niche doesn’t change they won’t change? Or is it closer to a feedback loop actively maintaining stasis and weeding out imperfections? (or maybe those last two statements say the same thing? :-)
Honestly Curious
Scott, it’s probably that they’ve evolved in a hagfishy direction…
they’re primitive in terms of not having a lower jaw etc, but they still work just fine, and fit into their niche quite well.
Also, some forms, for example sphenodonts and coelecanths, haven’t evolved on the outside and have survived for a long time. Their forms may have been well fitted to their niche, like those of sharks, and so there’s no reason to change. Nevertheless, internal changes have probably occurred, increasing the efficacy of their immune system etc.
So, to get back to your question, hagfish haven’t changed because they didn’t need to, but they’ve advanced the same form; a modern hagfish is probably a lot faster, more efficient and healthier than its ancient counterpart.
Arrgh. As nobody has given me the obvious cue I was looking for, I am forced to do it myself (I’m married, so doing it myself is old hat).
The creationist have said that T-rex ate fucking coconuts before the “fall”, so I am forced to ask, “Won’t someone please think of the coconuts?”
Okay, not as funny as I would have liked.
Damn.
Why aren’t any of my jokes intelligently designed?
Autumn: Because they come from a brain that wasn’t. YAY!
Hi Scott. Say…didn’t you ask the same question about a year ago? Is this your annual Hagfish Evolution Query Pilgrimage to Pharyngula? ;-)
It’s a good question. Here’s one reply from last year’s thread:
Consider, also, these possiblities:
1. There’s no imperative to evolve more complex feature. (i.e. Why are there still worms?)
2. Hagfish have evolved some pretty cool traits. (High durability, efficient metabolism, low mortality rate, durable eggs, awesome slime-production ability.)
3. Hagfish do occupy a secure niche and, like sharks, may not have experienced any significant selective pressure that would have resulted in extinction of the ancestral lines and their morphologically similar descendants.
4. The fossil record for hagfish is extremely thin. It suggests that hagfish haven’t changed much in 300 million years, but how can we be certain? There are dozens of species of hagfish, which implies that there has been quite a lot of evolutionary branching – perhaps into more complex forms, either living or extinct, that haven’t been discovered or identified as hagfish descendants.
5. Ichthyic can probably come up with a more comprehensive response than I can. :-)
wazza (more speedily than I) wrote:
LoL, yes! Well put!
Hagfish may not have evolved high speed or great strength or camouflage, but they generate mucus at an absolutely astonishing speed. Mucus generation is probably highly derived; what other chordate does it to that extent? It may not seem like much, but we can suggest that being disgusting is an excellent defensive survival trait, true?
I’m in the middle of The Ancestor’s Tale right now; I’ll eventually see what he says about hagfish, and whether my musings make any sense.
Faster than homo sapiens with a sinus infection ?
Michael
Yes. Indeed. Verily!
I get the idea that squid have had as long to evolve as we’ve had. They’ve had enough time to develop some really cool traits. But what about the more “primitive” forms, such as hagfish? The hagfish alive today have had exactly as long as we’ve had to evolve. So why are they still “primitive”?
primitive is merely a way to help label level of derived characterstics. When we say a hagfish is “primitive” we speak of it as having traits that are less “derived” than in other species, like most teleosts. For example, the lack of fully developed jaws, eyes, etc. are defined as “primitive” traits. It’s a way of distinguishing simple-appearing traits in a species that are very different, evolutionarily speaking, from those that are actually “regressive”. Regressive traits are ones that have actually gone back to being simplified from a more developed state, like for example the poorly developed eyes in cavefishes. We don’t call the eyes in cavefishes “primitive”; they are fully derived traits, there just has been significant selection pressure to shift the developmental pathways into making them far more “simplified”.
That’s about as simply as I can explain it without referencing some other much longer treatise on it.
OK, now on to the other things:
when you say:
I get the idea that squid have had as long to evolve as we’ve had.
I would recommend checking out a page like this one:
http://www.tolweb.org/tree/
to get a better picture of just how long any given “branchlet” has had to evolve.
cephalopods as a group have been around for quite a bit longer than vertebrates, but that might be meaningless if you are curious about how long any given species has had to evolve.
If you wish to compare modern humans (genus Homo) to say, Loligio (market squid); modern humans haven’t been around nearly as long as the market squid has (~2 million vs. about 50).
so the point is, if you want to compare evolution between species on JUST the time scales alone, you have to know what kind of time scales you are dealing with.
That said, there is a lot more that goes into figuring out what might constrain the evolution of traits in one species vs. another.
Hagfish, for example, aren’t anything like tetrapods (for example) in either what kinds of selective pressures they have faced in their history. In most areas where they are common (deep sea benthic), the environment changes very little. It’s always cold and dark, with relatively constant salinity, for example.
since the copious amount of slime appears to serve as a sufficient defense against most predators (they also do other weird things, like cover themselves in their own feces, bury themselves, etc.), there hasn’t been much pressure from other species on them either.
Finally, if there were significant enough changes to an agnathid (for example, it developed a full set of jaws), it would no longer be an agnathid…
it would be something else.
at that point, thinking “why haven’t agnathids evolved more” starts to sound like:
WHY ARE THERE STILL PYGMIES AND DWARVES!!!!
see?
[Disclaimer: not really my area, so don’t dogpile on me too hard]
Wouldn’t you expect the relative changes from the common ancestor to be broadly correlated to the amount of environmental change that a species has seen? I guess `environment’ would also need to include changes in predator/prey behaviour, there.
Whenever I think of problems like this I always think of a genetic algorithm (yes, simplified computing metaphor and all that). If the objective function stays the same, then roughly so will the population distribution, but if it undergoes a sudden change, the population variation tends to explode for a fair while until it settles down on the new optimum/optima.
To someone with more biology knowledge than me: is that a (vaguely) reasonable way of thinking about the problem, or does Big Science want to oppress my ideas? ;)
#94 [wazza on Pratchett on beetles]
I think Pratchett pinched this from J.B.S. Haldane. Someone is supposed to have asked him what he had learned about the nature of the creator from his studies in biology. Haldane replied “An inordinate fondness for beetles.”
Yeah, that’s what Pratchett does, he writes satire and parodies. The god in question is the God of Evolution, who doesn’t have any believers.
Eh, read the whole series. It’s worth it.
Let’s be fair, though, Last Continent definitely wasn’t one of the best.
DrFrank:
No need to fear the dogpile – you’re pretty much there. If the environment that a population is in (note: this environment includes other populations of the same species, populations of competing/predator/prey or parasitic species, as well as internal features such as the relative population of males/females large/small animals within the population e.t.c.) doesn’t change very much then neither will the population, at least once it’s optimised to it’s niche.
Simply put, if it ain’t broke, evolution ain’t gonna fix it.
DrFrank said said:
Definitely! Mind you I’m not the biggest Rincewind/Wizard fan so I’m probably not the best judge (at least I wasn’t a fan until the Science of Discworld books came out).
I’m more of a Watch/Witches girl myself (although the Patrician is my all time favourite).
WHY ARE THERE STILL PYGMIES AND DWARVES!!!!
Because we’re short so we don’t hit our heads on trees!
Oh yes, Vetinari is a favourite with the ladies…
he’s just got so much style
Personally, I’m a fan of the Watch, Witches and Death storylines (ie just about all of it), and Moist von Lipwig is shaping up great… awful news about Terry’s illness, though.
Lilly: It took me a long time to come round to the wiz(z)ards of the Discworld. Especially as the first 3 books were based on them and TP hadn’t really gotten into his stride by then.
I have come to like them now and even have a small fondess for Rincewind. The Science of the Discworld helped, as did The Last Hero.
I’m afraid I have nothing to add to the subjects of squid, bioluminscence or the DI.
May I just point out that bioluminescence uses a protein called Luciferin, and another called Luciferase?
Yet more evidence of the hand of Satan in science!
Thanks for the clarification, Lilly: I suspected that the idea was relatively sound, but as a non-biologist (I mainly work with optimisation/computer vision) a quick bit of peer-review is always a good idea :D
Maxi said:
Yeah, I think maybe one of reasons I really got into the Witches was the fact that by the time “Equal Rites” came along he’d got a lot more comfortable with his style so everything didn’t seem quite so forced – I still am not Rincewind fan I’m afraid, although I now quite like the Wizards when they are “background”, as in Nightwatch or Hogfather, rather than when they are the main event.
I agree with Wazza though – like a lot of ostensibly evil characters in fiction, the Patrician is just so much more fun than the “good” guys!
wazza said:
The devil once again shows which side has all the style!
DrFrank:
No worries, always glad to help!
Big Dog PZ,
I think your bark is louder than your bite. You still have not in anyway demonstrated to us how something so unique happens like magic over billions of years. Your boy Big dog Gould blew away the possibility of Darwins evolution every happening in time. And big dog you got NO missing links – they are ALL still missing. Check the evidence big boy!
That is very sound advice. Why don’t you heed it? Are you afraid of learning something that might threaten your worldview?
Oooh. Scary.
And big dog you got NO missing links – they are ALL still missing. Check the evidence big boy!
[Ignoring the use of the outdated term “missing link” here]
…Apart from the fish to tetrapod transitionals, the land-dwelling mammal to whale transitionals, the mammal to hooved mammal transitionals, the reptile jawbone to mammalian inner ear transitionals, the ape to human-like transitionals, obviously. And those are just the ones that I, a non-biologist, can name of off the top of my head.
Oh yes, and it’s tied up with a big happy bow of supporting geological and genetic evidence.
…and you have the first two chapters of Genesis on your side, right?
Oh goodie – a Reservoir IDiot.
You still have not in anyway demonstrated to us how something so unique happens like magic
because it doesn’t happen like magic, and it’s not unique?
Which, was, in fact, what PZ was demonstrating.
thanks for playing.
Frank Sherwin M.A.
Master of Anti-Science?
Science Editor? Well, he edits out the science!
Geez, I’d give anything to isolate a bacterial colony that screamed “Jaaayzuusss!” from the petri dish. That would make my day. Hilarious.
Lilly: I think one of the best bits is that, although he’s evil, he’s on the good side. It’s like a bad guy you’re allowed to cheer for.
Plus, he gets all the best lines:
“I do believe it is pineapple.”
This unique trait reflects the Creator’s glory while erecting yet another scientific roadblock to the evolutionary explanation of physical origins–for how could random genetic mutations lead to such intricate molecular structures?
This guy loves puns more than a fly geneticist! However, he asks rhetorical questions which a real geneticist would take as research challenges.
This is also awesome: he provides a definition of “light”. biophotonics, which examines the use of electromagnetic radiation (light) in the living world.
I’m kind of loving the appalling writing in this article.